{"id":4201,"date":"2014-06-03T08:58:43","date_gmt":"2014-06-03T13:58:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/?p=4201"},"modified":"2014-06-03T09:05:23","modified_gmt":"2014-06-03T14:05:23","slug":"piketty-and-bureaucracy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/?p=4201","title":{"rendered":"Piketty and Bureaucracy"},"content":{"rendered":"

I intended to write a long, profound essay on Thomas Piketty’s news-making book release \u201cCapital in the 21st Century<\/a>” . . . but then I realized that I may not have all that much to add to the discussion. And there has been plenty of discussion on this book over the past few weeks (Salon<\/a>, The Economist<\/a>, Financial Times<\/a>, NY Times<\/a>, Wall St Journal<\/a>, Forbes<\/a>, NY Review of Books<\/a>, etc.). Most of it is worth reading, quite erudite and long-sighted. <\/p>\n

In a nutshell, Piketty has written a long tome about the historical economic trends of industrialized civilization over the past 4 centuries or so, addressing the overall question as to whether capitalism and free markets have made things better for the common, average person. Well, most people would have to agree that on average (with plenty of exceptions to the rule), the economic growth that capitalism has fostered raised the living standards of a majority of people in the industrialized nations, over the long term. The question really is, just who is getting the bigger share of free-market capitalism’s benefits; is the generated wealth being widely distributed, or is it being concentrated in the hands of a rich few? Do the long-run trends favor income equality and widespread opportunity, or are they increasing concentration of wealth in a tiny majority, with more and more people shut out from a chance at the good life? <\/p>\n

As you might guess, the historical evidence on that is mixed; but Piketty seems to feel (I haven’t read the book, I’m just going by what others are saying) that the overall trend emerging from the noise and from the unforeseeable historical perturbations (such as big wars) is that capitalism inherently tends to concentrate wealth. On the whole, it gives more and more economic return over time to providers of capital, and less and less return to providers of labor (most forms of labor, other than perhaps, entrepreneurial \/ managerial effort, along with highly specialized technical skills that happen to be relevant to an important technology for some limited period of time \u2013 e.g. smart phone software engineers). <\/p>\n

In the long run, if this trend continues, we will have a fantastically productive economy with a small population of extremely wealthy capital owners and entrepreneurial risk-takers, along with a handful of technicians to assist them (the remnants of the middle class), with everyone else living more-or-less like peasants in the Middle Ages. (Or more realistically, like the \u201cunderclass\u201d in today’s cities and rural regions). <\/p>\n

The thing that really incites debate is Piketty’s recommendation that a world-wide wealth taxation system be established, a system that would not allow tycoons to shop around for a low-tax nation to move to after they’ve made it big. Obviously, Mr. Piketty feels that the rich increasingly owe something to growing ranks of economically disenfranchised people, but they will need to be forced to fork over the cash since they otherwise don’t need the services or extremely limited resources of such people. Again obviously, there is a wide range of opinion amongst the pundits about this prescription. About all I can add to the discussion, off the top of my head, is to ask: just how could the revenues of such a tax be used to make any real difference in the lives of the growing majority of economically irrelevant families? <\/p>\n

If the trends of technology and capitalism are as strong as Piketty make them out to be, then it’s hard to see how such a tax will make much of a difference. Oh sure, it may help feed some starving people or provide some expensive health care services that the masses could not otherwise afford. And maybe that would ultimately be worthwhile to the rich, if it tamps down the temptation on the part of the proletariat to rebel against the machine by becoming domestic terrorist Luddites. (Also to prevent the rise of political rabble-rousers, assuming that the rich haven’t already bought off the political system with their wealth \u2013 they seem to be doing a pretty good job today in keeping our political system from going populist). <\/p>\n

The other issue that I don’t feel Piketty dealt with sufficiently is the effect of technology. Over the decades and centuries, technology has sometimes made common, low-to-moderately skilled labor more valuable to the capital holders, and sometimes (as of late) has made it increasingly unneeded. Where is technology taking us today? Overall, does the internet and other communications technologies open up opportunities for the less well off, or close them? What technologies could make common human abilities relevant again to the entrepreneur, without pricing it down to Chinese or Indian sweat-shop \/ live-in-factory conditions? Anything?<\/p>\n

Well . . . I’ll leave the Piketty topic right there, as I don’t have any good answers to these questions. Let me just make a little observation about something that recently struck me regarding the labor-providers in my own area of the economy (i.e., government service). As many right-wing politicians decry, a lot of government workers who were hired more than 10 years ago got a sweet deal, in terms of retirement benefits. These workers were making a bit less than what was available in the private sector at the time (the 1980s and 90s). But they hung in there, and now they want to cash-in on the relatively low hurdles that were set for them to gain valuable (and more costly than anticipated) retirement benefits. <\/p>\n

Workers with 25 years of service can often retire at about half their maximum yearly salary, and receive lifetime health benefits to boot. Not a bad deal if you started with the government at around age 30, and now you are 55 and want to just kick around or work part-time (not for government, though, as the retirement plans bar that; although there are certain ways around that restriction, such as coming back as a part-time contractor \u2013 I have seen that happen). Conservative politicians such as NJ Governor Chris Christie are trying to rally the voters to welsh on the deal and take many of these benefits away from long-term government workers, and they have had some success. But still, a lot of those workers are able to \u201cget out now, while the getting is good\u201d.<\/p>\n

This past week, I saw three middle-level government workers people in their 50s enjoy their last workday. But this is not terribly uncommon; most government people who reach the health benefits threshold head for the door right away. In a way this is sad, because their working life had become mostly about getting over the goal line, and not about finding happiness in what they do (or did). I can only think of maybe one or two people where I work who have more than enough time to retire at a comfortable level, but stay on apparently because they enjoy what they are doing. I don’t know just what it is that makes government work so spiritually toxic, why it turns so many talented people into \u201cmonths left to go\u201d countdown zombies. (And I must admit, I myself have a \u201ccountdown clock\u201d in my head \u2013 this phenomenon is infectious).<\/p>\n

There are a lot of good things about working for the government. One of them should be the opportunity to serve the public, to contribute to the good of the whole. Unfortunately, the top leaders of government are selected by the political process, and the corruptions that are increasingly infecting the modern political system find ways to seep into the daily mechanics of government work. Politics are all about struggle, and struggle can be wearying. Fairness and ethics take a back seat, and modern information technology and marketing psychologists have allowed politics to become increasingly vicious and untethered to the facts. Politics is now mostly about image and rhetorical technique, about holding power day-to-day, and is less and less focused on finding truth and seeking long-term public good. (Perhaps we need another Piketty to write a tome about that trend.)<\/p>\n

I’d like to think that my own struggles with the mini-politics of daily life in a county agency have been worth it, that I have made some real contributions to the \u201ccommon weal\u201d, that I have given the public their money’s worth. But at the same time, I continue to count the months until I too can put it all aside. I wish they could find a way to keep us all inspired, to be constantly willing to go the extra mile, but . . . as the saying goes . . . politics are politics!! <\/p>\n

(And if Piketty is right, retired government workers with relatively good benefits are going to among the last of the 20th Century middle class enjoying the American suburban good life. But then again, these workers were unwillingly subject to a lot of politics, and modern politics have become war<\/a>, and war is hell; so maybe they should be treated, to some degree, like veterans. But then again, given the recent VA health care scandals, I’m not sure that that would be good either!)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I intended to write a long, profound essay on Thomas Piketty’s news-making book release \u201cCapital in the 21st Century” . . . but then I realized that I may not have all that much to add to the discussion. And there has been plenty of discussion on this book over the past few weeks (Salon, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,13,6],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4201"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4201"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4201\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4203,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4201\/revisions\/4203"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4201"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4201"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4201"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}